WASHINGTON TALK: WORKING PROFILE

By JONATHAN FUERBRINGER

Published: February 27, 1987

WASHINGTON, Feb. 26—
Senator Phil Gramm is a legislator with a stomach for one-man battles.

Which is a trait the Texas Republican will need in coming weeks as he battles to protect the budget-balancing law that he helped shepherd through Congress two years ago.

Widely hailed at the time as a landmark piece of legislation, the law is now under broad attack by budget writers on Capitol Hill, Republicans and Democrats. They want to relax the law's tight restraints, arguing that the $63 billion in savings it mandates in the budget for the fiscal year 1988 cannot be achieved without significant tax increases, which President Reagan opposes, or budgetary gimmicks and phony savings, which they oppose.

''Tough!'' Mr. Gramm replies. He intends to fight to keep teeth in the law, using any and all legislative tactics he considers necessary.

And he says he has considerable political leverage on his side because a balanced budget is still a popular idea with voters. 'The Law of the Land'

''The enforcement mechanism is the American people,'' Mr. Gramm said. In his view, Congress cannot afford ''to come back and say we weren't really serious'' about reducing the deficit.

''They're in their pre-springtime euphoria,'' Mr. Gramm said of the chairmen of the House and the Senate Budget Committees and others who have suggested that the law's $108 billion deficit ceiling for this year will have to be raised, maybe to $130 billion.

''They think there is no magic in the $108 billion,'' he added.

''The magic is that it is the law of the land. I think getting out of that commitment is going to be a lot more difficult than they think.''

Few senators enjoy going alone against their colleagues, especially when the tactics disrupt the work of the Senate or force politically embarrassing votes.

But Mr. Gramm does not shy from such work. Less Inclined to Do Battle

The other principal sponsors of the budget-balincing law, Senator Warren B. Rudman, Republican of New Hampshire, and Senator Ernest F. Hollings, Democrat of South Carolina, are less inclined to do battle than is Mr. Gramm.

''Phil is going to stonewall it up to the end,'' Senator Rudman said. ''He thinks that works. I don't play it that way because I'm not sure it will work.''

Mr. Rudman said he was willing to discuss changing the law's deficit target but not until Congress had done all it could to reach the $108 billion target.

Senator Hollings wants to keep the target at $108 billion. But he acknowledges he is worried, especially about the potentially adverse impact of Mr. Gramm's tactics. ''He loves guerrilla warfare and he loves to lose,'' Mr. Hollings said. ''He's my heaviest burden.'' In 1981, when Mr. Gramm was a Democrat serving in the House of Representatives, he was ostracized by his party after he joined the White House and Republicans to push through President Reagan's major budget cuts of that year.

In 1985, after switching to the Republican Party and the Senate, he promoted the idea of the budget-balancing law but initially was paid little attention. Then he caught the leadership of both the Republican-controlled Senate and the Democratic-controlled House off guard when the idea suddenly caught fire politically.

Mr. Gramm says he is ready and eager to use guerrilla legislative tactics to try to force the Senate to abide by the law's deficit-reducing regimen, which is designed to blot up the Government's red ink by 1991. In writing the law, he included rules and procedures in the Senate that could make his fight easier.

Mr. Gramm's first move will be to raise a point of order against consideration of any budget plan in the Senate that does not reduce the deficit to $108 billion.

Under the rules the Senate set up under the law, it will take at least 60 votes to consider a budget plan whose deficit is over the ceiling.

Even if the 60 votes materialize, Mr. Gramm can try to tie the Senate in knots later in the year when the total amount of spending approved in appropriation bills pushes the projected deficit over $108 billion. He then can force more point-of-order votes.

In addition, Mr. Gramm is expected to have the strong support of the White House in demanding that Congress adhere to the $108 billion deficit ceiling.

Mr. Gramm argues that the deficit targets set in the law are still politically powerful.

When the law was approved, he notes, much of its support, especially among Democrats, was almost entirely political - a reluctance of members to be recorded voting against a budget mechanism that promised to balance the budget in five years. Several Democrats Agree

Several Democrats on the House Budget Committee agree with Mr. Gramm's analysis of the situation.

Representative Mike Lowry of Washington supports raising the deficit ceiling. But he said he was not sure the Democrats had the votes to make the change.

''Members are scared of the political demagoguery of saying they are walking away from the commitment they made in Gramm-Rudman,'' he said.

Representative Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of Brooklyn, agreed, saying the committee should get support from other Democrats before considering a change in the deficit ceiling.

Mr. Gramm also expects strong support from several Republicans in the House, including the ranking Republican on the Budget Committee, Representative Delbert L. Latta of Ohio, who are on record against any change in the ceiling.

In the House, it will take a three-fifths vote of those present and voting to approve a final budget plan that does not keep the deficit at $108 billion or less.

Meantime, the chairman of the House Budget Committee has made an interesting concession. A New Mechanism? Representative William H. Gray 3d, the Pennsylvania Democrat who started the talk about abandoning the $108 billion deficit target, said this week that he would consider a proposal to design a new automatic spending cut mechanism for the law. The Supreme Court struck down the original mechanism last summer because it violated the Constitution's separation of powers.

Mr. Gramm has said he and other legislators would try to add a new mechanism to the law by amending the legislation to raise the Government's debt ceiling.

Such a mechanism would automatically reduce spending if Congress and the White House exceeded the deficit ceiling. A vote to raise the debt ceiling, which allows the Government to borrow to pay its bills, is expected in May.

That Mr. Gray should agree to consider a new mechanism is somewhat surprising since the Democratic leadership in the House has opposed the move.

But for Mr. Gray and some other Democrats, a new spending cut mechanism might be the only way to make raising the deficit ceiling politically acceptable.